To Each His Own
by Nellynee
Summary: He clutched the sheets, trying to tell himself that his fingers were covered in coarse, teal fur, that sharp little platypus claws pricked through the thread.  But they were too flexible, too sensitive to pretend.  A Perry turned human story
1. Chapter 1

My take on the "Perry turns human" gig. Done mostly for the fact that most of the others annoy me for some reason or another, be it the character design, or how it's approached or… well anything. May become a bit cliché after a while, or even from the start. I'm not going for some whole new idea here, I'm just trying to do the idea right, you know? I also don't have the ending planned out too well, so as things develop, please, feel free to throw in your own views and ideas.

I also warn you now, that I am an avid shipper. I will try to keep this a light and friendly as I can, but I do tend to go into fics with certain pairings in mind. I guarantee we won't go into mature territory here, shipping wise at least, but it could go anywhere from subtle ambiguity to flat out blatant. I'm only saying something, because I know how bad shipping wars can be, so I don't want to hear any "I like this story, but could you have this pairing instead of such and such pairing."

No, the answer is no.

Anyway, I hope you guys enjoy, I really really do.

This has been inspired by all those amazing, actually close to on style pics of human Perry all over Deviant art. Special mention goes to "Hot-choc", "Silk-Ward", "Pentamerone" (_Love_ the hair darling!), and "Fuwa2-Kyara" (who has just an amazing platypus!Doof, seriously) for their "mweee" inspiring designs, which gave me hope, and sweet release from an overly feminine Perry design. While they are certainly not my only inspiration, they are the only ones I can think of off the top of my head. Thank you.

Warning, gets really freaking dark/bad near the end of this chapter. But we have to get through the nitty gritty to get to the good stuff.

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"Curse You Perry The Platy-AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH I'M ON FIRE!"

The howl was almost as amusing as the subsequent explosion, the shockwave of which Perry rode a respectable distance away so he could circle around and check to see just how much damage the Doctor had taken. It was an unusually showy defeat, but Perry got some perverse satisfaction from the well timed destruction of his nemesis's latest scheme. Right on cue, Perry felt the expected ball of flaming shrapnel fly past his hang glider, across town, and into the Flynn-Fletcher backyard. From a distance, he could see the mass catch in the large, boat shaped carnival ride sticking several stories in the air. With momentum, the boat swung over its support once, twice, three times before flying off, carrying the whole thing into the ocean.

Had he been close enough, no doubt he would have heard cheering coming from the "534th Bi-monthly Viking pride festival" at the beach, who watched in awe as the archaic ship burned and sunk beneath the ocean.

An unexpected wind from the east powered into him with sudden force, and Perry couldn't pinpoint the cause until a moment latter when he righted himself some yards down in the air, shaking the sound of jet engines from his ringing ears.

This time he was ready, so when the small, slim, silver craft came racing toward him once more it was met with an expert dip of the wing of his hanglider, and it raced past, leaving him unscathed.

With an absent flick of what passed for his thumb, he flipped a switch on the handle of his glider, causing the built in engines to kick to life. With his greater speed and control, he swung back around, using his maneuverability to stay ahead of the craft, sure that Doctor D was out for revenge for scorching his furniture.

It took three, long passes, and various near misses before he spotted his enemy. He had expected him to be on the outer skirts of the large outer patio, cackling with glee as he maneuvered the controls. Instead he was… still on fire?

Doctor Doofenshmirtz shook the fire extinguisher while looking into the nozzle in a vain attempt to put out the flames from the oil of his "French Fry-inator", not seeming to notice the fact that both his left sleeve and hair were in flames. Doof looked up long enough for said extinguisher to decide to discharge right into his face, with almost comical force.

Perry shook his head in exasperation, and perhaps a little fondness. He couldn't tell whether Dr. D had been ready to grin and wave enthusiastically, or give him the bird. It was a close call.

_Idiot, well at least he's no longer on fire. But if he's not controlling the craft, then what in the world-_

The distraction cost him, because it was then that the triangular craft chose to swing around, back into sight, tearing one of its wings through the cloth of Agent P's glider.

It struck true, and his glider hung helpless for a second, before beginning it's wobbly, if not quick descent.

Perry abandoned the glider for the ground, and for an O.W.C.A grunt to confiscate latter in the day. It was definitely attacking him, though it didn't appear to have any projectile weapons of any sort. Good, because neither did he. With their highly specialized weaponry, today's mission hadn't predicted the need, and one hadn't been issued. The Jetpack, if he could slip it out of his grosgrain hatband and decompress it, had speed on its side, but definitely not enough to out run the sleek little missile.

If he could get into an area with more tall buildings, he could lose it temporarily, and get close enough without getting hurt to hop on top and dismantle it mid air.

It was the sort of maneuver he learned in basic training, the sort of maneuver he did daily to various robots and even Doof himself. With a great deal of confidence and a plan, he slipped the other shoulder strap of his jet pack over his shoulder and some 30 stories in the air, hit the ignition.

The machine sputtered, and horribly, unexpectedly, died. Once more, twice, and a hurried urgency settled in. The slim air shuttle was circling around in the distance. At the right angle, he could trap it with his chute. It might propel him close enough to catch onto one of the buildings. But he could already see that the angle was all wrong. It would come up from below, impaling him with the force of his own body.

He pressed the button harder, heard it sputter, knew he didn't have the time nor tools to take it off and fix it midair.

He cursed abandoning the glider. He could have used it to evade the incoming missile, slowed his descent, anything but this.

Bracing for impact, Agent P caught the barest glimpse of sunlight off the bottom of the craft, caught the sharp frontward edge. It cut into his fingers with the force of it, and they numbed instantly with impact and windchill. The slickness of his blood, maybe something else entirely, was too much, and his fingers let go without his permission before he could even register holding on. It was going too fast, and when he fell into the hatch on the underside that had caught the sun a second before, it was with enough force to knock him senseless.

The hatch closed just as quickly as it had opened, leaving him in total darkness.

He struggled. There wasn't enough room to even pull his arm straight to punch, nor enough room to build momentum for a good kick or whack of his tail.

He was as good as bound.

Perry calmed quickly, unsure of how much air was available to him. In the darkness, he carefully felt the space around him. The sides were metallic, cold, smooth. He could hear the sound of air rushing around him at high speeds, but there were no telltale drafts to expose cracks. He prodded the tender creases of his fingertips, trying to ease and stop the bleeding, since he couldn't lick them clean as instinct demanded of him. Under the swollen numbness and the tacky feel of blood, he felt something else, smooth and waxy. Lifting his fingers to the holes in his bill that served as nostrils proved a difficult and exhausting challenge in the hard pressed space, but he managed it after some time.

It had an odorless sort of tang, the ambiguous, musky scent of a heavy oil, though Perry couldn't bring to mind any waxy oils that could survive under such high speeds. He refused to taste it for any more clues. The last thing he needed was to be poisoned.

Lying there, Perry the Platypus realized that he wouldn't have been able to grasp onto the back of this vessel long enough to open it up anyways, even if his pack had worked. Whoever had built this device had done it with such personal tactics in mind. Judging by the way the oil slicked when he rubbed it on the walls of his prison, Perry would never have gotten the grip he needed sitting still on the ground, let alone at those speeds in the air.

Minutes, hours, days, Perry was unsure of how long he spent trapped in the dark, void of stimuli. Sometimes, the cold got very bad, and he spent an eternity shivering deep in his chest.

Disappointment in himself mounted when, along the way, he noticed a chill on his scalp, and realized he had dropped his hat.

_Great._

Gradually, he became aware of the numbness. Starting in his fingers, it crawled up his arms and had started on his shoulders before he really felt it. He was glad he decided not to taste it.

Drugged.

Now he saw why the outside was greased. This vessel was exclusively for capture. Long ranged weapons risk a kill at high altitudes. But if this thing swung by close enough, sliced you opened, all they'd have to do is wait for you to fall.

But his nemesis was Doctor Doofenshmirtz, he was nothing more than a particularly skilled pawn in a lesser sanction of the Secret Services for the World.

As he fell into bleary darkness, Agent P had to wonder. Who would want him alive, and why?

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Pain woke him.

Absolute, soul tearing, blinding, burning pain.

Something held him down, everything held him down. There had been some half assed attempt to numb him, but he could only tell because rather than just the consuming pain of an open wound, he could fell bits and pieces of him scraped away and opened up as figures above him poked and prodded at his tender innards. He jerked upwards, but was held down at every angle.

He wanted to twist his head, but it was strapped down, holding the long, animal gas mask on his beak. Whatever had strapped him down was loose enough for him to tell that something or things was drilled deep into his skull, holding him in place, pressing at his temples, _into bone_.

"Good Morning Agent P."

A blurry shape of a woman blocked the bright surgical lights. She sounded entirely too chipper.

_FocusFocusFocusFocus_

"I trust you had a good sleep."

_FocusFocusFocusFocusFOCUS!_

Something hard, unforgiving, **sharp** prodded something giving and soft inside of him.

"You had us worried there for a while."

_Focus Perry! Ignore the pain and FOCUS!_

The shape lost some of its blur. She was a mass of white. White mask, white surgical gown, white cap.

"Without your hat you were hard to identify. We were almost convinced that we'd made a mistake, but this little baby proved different."

Something large and metallic clunked in the background as she patted it, and whatever was attached to his head stressed the bone as it swayed. In the shadow of the lights, he couldn't get the color of her eyes. What little hair showed under the hat was dark, but indiscriminately colored.

_FocusFocusFocusFocus_

He couldn't see, but horribly, nauseatingly, he realized that what one of the men above him was repining next to his hip was a flap of skin, held taut by said pin. Skin that belonged attached to his pelvis.

"Don't die yet, this is important. Even if you can't say a word your body will tell us so much. Isn't that wonderful Agent P?"

He was being dissected like some darn lab experiment!

"Hello, can you hear me Agent P?"

Something sliced into his arm, a burning trail of fire that bled and bled and bled. He felt the skin peel back, heard the slick sucking sound of it, felt the fire.

"Oh for goodness sakes, just put him back under, that sound is piercing my ears!"

Somewhere in the distance, Perry heard another Platypus scream. It was a desperate, hurt scream, the kind of scream a wounded wild one makes when it breaks a limb in a trap, the kind of scream a blind platypup makes when it calls for its dame's milk. Loud, raw, wounded. The kind of scream that wears at the throat and exhausts the body.

He couldn't scream anymore.

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It gets better trust me, I promise people.

And yeah, I know, I'm horrible at action scenes. I'm much better at introspection, and there will be lots of that soon.


	2. Chapter 2

Not the best first chapter, which is why I worked so hard to get this out so soon. Was kind of nervous about how people would react, so to all you awesome reviewers, thanks, it gave me a great confidence boost.

I'm writing these relatively quickly, so they are getting a great deal less proofreading than my longer pieces. Please, feel free to point out any mistakes in spelling, grammar, or even flow that you find so that I may fix them.

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The next time he woke properly, his mind was a blank. Tired beyond reason, it was an exhausting effort to remember who he was and how he got there. Without real prompting or forethought, he took tally of his situation as best he could. He was achy and lethargic. His arms weighed more than they should and didn't want to assist him in any way. Everything around him was white, a blinding blur, a void of color.

With effort, he calmed his heart from the stabbing, paralyzing fear that jumped to the forefront. Logically, he could already tell that this was not the same situation, but foggy, hazy, half recollections of his last journey through the waking world had been by far the most terrifying affair of his short platypus life.

What in the world had they done to him?

Afraid to move and find out, he gathered his strength. For hours Perry dipped in and out of consciousness, trying to build his resolve and muster the effort to look down at his no doubt broken body. Focus came slowly, time meant nothing as his body throbbed in deadened, aching pain. It was a monumental effort to open his eyes; it took every ounce of energy to twist his neck.

Good lord, what had they _done_ to him?

No grotesque stitching met his vision, no straps nor pins nor staples to hold him together. All there was was just plain, pale skin on too long, blunt limbs, half hidden beneath pristine sheets.

His mind rebelled, reeled, and fought the very notion.

_Impossible_

He clutched the sheets, trying to tell himself that his fingers were covered in coarse, teal fur, that sharp little platypus claws pricked through the thread. But they were too flexible, too sensitive to pretend.

_Nonononononononono_

Oh good gosh, they took his tail, his bill! Why had they done this to him? How? How was this… Oh god what exactly-

The nausea suddenly went acute, and to weak to move, bile rose and flooded his nose and mouth. Choking, he wearily turned his head and somehow spat the liquid onto his pillow. It dribbled over his cheek and settled into his ear. It leaked, burning, from the back of his nose, and he spent several minutes fighting between the need to vomit again, clearing his throat, a simply breathing.

_Look around you_ _Perry, put it out of mind and find a way out._

The feel of too long limbs, the chill of bare skin might have been easier to ignore if there had been anything to look at. Walls were closed in, white, polished. There was a sterling toilet with a sink built off the side in one corner, a door in the opposite corner past the end of his bed of the same material. The walls, the floor, the ceiling were tiled and white. The square room couldn't have been more than 8 feet wide. His cot, if he could call it that, was tall, and looked more like a hospital gurney than a bed.

There was no clock, and the lights from above were bright, reflecting off everything. There was no concept of time as he laid there, just the infinite quite.

Forever latter, he forced strength into his limbs, an eternity, and his wobbly self held up for more than a few seconds.

He wasn't familiar with this body at all, it was too tall. His center of gravity was all wrong. His back ached as his muscled clenched to sway a tail not there every time his balance shifted. He hadn't gotten vertigo since his tenth mission, but he got it now, by simply looking down. His legs wouldn't hold his weight, and more often than not he ended up on his bum on the bed.

This was infinitely harder than Candace's Body. That one had muscle memory on his side, knew how to keep its own balance. It felt like he'd never stood before a day in his life.

Before he's managed to take more than 2 steps, a chute opened on the underside of the door, and a covered tray slid in with barely a whisper.

Perry ignored it in favor of learning to walk. For what had to be hours, he'd stand, hold his weight, and slide down again to the bed in an exhausted heap. At one point, shivering in the air conditioned chill and with no clothing to protect him, he slept fitfully and ended up on the floor.

Using the rails at the head of his bed, then the walls to balance as best he could, Perry made his way around the room, ever mindful of the walls, trying to find something, anything to grasp. Cracks in the foundation, a hidden hatch, a toe hold to get up to the ventilation, anything to give him hope. He was an expert at finding exits.

There was nothing.

Reaching the toilet, his determined search gave way to his bodily needs. It was no litter box, but he believed he knew the basics of the hellish contraption and would make do. He couldn't stand long enough to make an effort at the male dominate way, so he sat instead, ever conscious of the way his bladder cramped from holding in too long. He took the opportunity to wash the sticky residue off his face and out of his ear and take a long, dragging drink for his parched throat.

Exhausted, he slept sitting there.

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Reenergized, though more achy than before, he used the facilities again, in case he lost the strength to get back, and continued his trek around his prison. The sink became a valuable and much needed source of water.

The tray proved to be a now cold serving of food, some sort of gruel, thin and odorless. To his amusement, a plastic glass of water accompanied it, probably of much better quality than the odd tasting sink water. At least he could keep hydrated.

Resting, he sat and calculated the risks while staring at what passed for food. On the one hand, he was starving, and needed his strength. On the other, it could be drugged, and his training gravely objected to accepting food on enemy territory (Though now that he thought about it, it had never mattered before. He was, after all, a platypus of manners, and to turn down Dr. D's hospitality was not only rude, but dissuasive of one of the man's few positive traits.)

His trek from the bed to the food must have taken much longer than he thought, because as he watched, the bottom of the sterling door opened like a hatch, and his old tray was whisked away, only to be replaced with another so quickly that he couldn't even get a glimpse at the outside. Removing the top took a moments fumbling with his long fingers, but when he finally pried it off, he found the same pale gruel as before and another glass of water.

The warm steam made up his mind for him, and with great care he filled his empty stomach. In its own way, he was relived by his boosted intelligence and experience with human lifestyle. He had no idea if he could have managed things like spoons and glasses without it, not with his new over flexible human paws.

Perry sighed, the sound sudden and loud in the white quiet.

The gruel was bland, but satisfying, and revitalized he used his newfound energy to make three more laps around the room, as much to gain strength as to memorize his surroundings. He kept the spoon. If he could manage to get to the ventilation some yards up, he might be able to use it to unscrew it open. He moved his tray into a corner. If he got three meals a day as he suspected he might, he could use them to keep track of time.

He fell asleep, and when he woke in the bed the lights were out and his insides cramped in hellish fire. He was lucky enough to reach the toilet before his body rejected its first good meal, but he was forced to sit in the dark in agony until his legs went numb while he voided himself. Even then he didn't feel better. Cleaning up was an embarrassing and messy affair, but he was glad then for the roll of thin tissue paper that the human's used to cleanse themselves, and he used more than half of it and the adjourning sink to make sure that his body was clean. He was sweating, chilled, and disgusted, but it was too dark to check to see how clean he really was, so he simply lurched to the bed and tried to sleep again.

In the dark, his mind raced and his insides flared. Unable to check the time, he worried over how long the lights had been out. He hadn't seen a single soul during his time in captivity. Anxiety twisted his gut even further when he realized that this place could be totally deserted, leaving him to starve in the quiet dark without him even knowing.

The next time he got up for the toilet, it was to throw up in a panic.

He fell asleep from sheer exhaustion, and when he woke, the lights were back on. It occurred to him then that it had been their simulation of night. Time would tell if he was right.

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He slept more often than not from sheer boredom, whether the lights were out or not. The food got better and grew more solid as time went by, though variety was limited, and infinitely bland to his taste. What he wouldn't give for some good, plump larvae, or some tiny fish to crunch.

Propping his bed up on end let him reach, just barely, the ventilation up above. There were no screws to unscrew, even after he chipped and scraped paint off of where metal met ceiling. Prying with the spoon proved fruitless, and nearly cost him a fall. It wouldn't have mattered anyways. He had judged the size adequate to his former self, but he doubted that his head could have fitted through with his new body, and there was no question about his shoulders. Careful watching and prepping to meet the meal change left him with no greater knowledge than before. Prying the automated hatch open broke one of his precious spoons.

After that he fell asleep in the middle of the floor, only to wake to clean sheets and a pillow free of his sick up. The cup he kept to drink from the sink and his impressive collection of spoons and trays were now gone. Whether it was the food or vented air that drugged him, he supposed he'd never know, but the aftertaste in his mouth suggested the food. His bed was now bolted to the floor.

It had taken a while to be sure, but he'd bet money that it was the vent that held the camera. He knew every inch of his prison and had never found one. All he knew was that that he always had clean sheets, and at this point they had taken his collection of trays no less than six times.

After exhausting his escape options, he opted to train. Compared to the confident, easy strength as a platypus agent, this human body was clumsy and weak. Rather than jog around his prison, he darted back and forth in quick sprints to improve his reaction time. Pushups and sit-ups provided an easy, if repetitive work out. Without his tail, he used folded sheets to soften the blow to his backbone with sit-ups, but it barely helped. As his early training came back to him, his work outs became more varied, and he supposed that it was the only thing that kept him sane.

At least it kept him warm. With no clothing and thin sheets for bedding, his chilly room, while not particularly cold, was so constant that sometimes he thought he would freeze.

He had no means to bathe, so when his skin started to feel tacky, he gathered his sheets and wiped himself down in the skin, using the last sheet as insulation to fight the chill. Every time he did this, like clockwork he would wake groggy from drugs and with new clean bedding. The black outs got really annoying very quickly, but being covered in his own filth sickened him.

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Eventually, his own cowardice shamed him, and when he was too awake to sleep and too tired to exercise, he explored his long ignored body in earnest.

In his first few days, the lack of hair on his scalp hadn't given him pause, but feeling it now, he realized that his captors had shaved his human head at one point before placing him here. They had apparently not deemed it necessary to do it again, because now and days, his hand was met with a ticklish prickle instead of smoothness. His face itched as his beard set in.

Thanks to his work lanky, undersized muscle had grown to a noticeable size. Without someone to compare to, there was no telling how tall he was, or how broad in comparison (though he supposed that his shoulders were a respectable bit wider than his hips). If he knew humans like he thought he did, he supposed his body might be attractive enough to look at, though he hardly thought himself a judge of such things. Because of the way his tailbone ached, he hadn't worked on sit-ups and other stomach straining exercises as much as he should have, and his tummy was still giving and soft under his pressing fingers, thought by no means did it seems to protrude.

His arms, legs, even his chest were covered in thin, wiry fur, of which he was amused to find to be the same teal color as his old pelt, giving his skin an odd tint to it. He'd spent the entirety to time between two trays of food feeling out his new fur, the odd patterns it made on his skin. It was infinitely amusing to explore the lines where the fur cut off, at the base of his neck, the trail down his stomach, his ankles. He simply didn't have that as a platypus.

His genitals were something he found both odd and intriguing, but he neglected his curiosity in favor of learning to aim at the toilet. Perry was ever mindful of the fact that someone had to be watching him to know of his needs as they did, and by no means was he an exhibitionist.

It felt weird, exploring himself and his world with sensitive fingertips. Every now and then he pressed things to his lips, a dribble of water, his spoon, the fabric in his sheets. It was so much more different than it was before. He missed the feel of a fish's heartbeat several feet away in his bill as he dived.

But with time and introspection came acceptance. He wasn't a vain platypus, and he had no desire for a mate (the O.W.C.A. had made sure of that). His job, defeating Doofenshmirz, and protecting his owners was all he could desire of life, and with proper training he could continue as he was before. He would miss his former body, it was all he had ever been after all, but it was not necessary for happiness. Not that he would ever give up the chance to return as he was.

His job now was to escape, so his self imposed training continued. When his opportunity arose, he would be ready.

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When the lights turned on in the morning after what he calculated to be his 69th tray, the sterling silver door opened for the first time.

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Next chapter: The Plot!


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